Park Byoung-Uk     performance, sculpture, curation, South Korea


Mutual Comfort performance in the winter of 2???

 		Park Byoung-Uk's work, at the edge of installation and Performance, is often a hommage to nature or the environment, such as his Performance, Mutual Comfort. Although we see him hugging the tree, for him the embrace was a two-way process. Like many indigenous cultures around the world, Park seeks to animate nature by engaging with her as an active participant. Often his works seem shamanistic. For him these Performances lie at the edge of art and ritual, as they are a means for communing with the divine through nature.



Since 1996, Park Byoung-Uk has organized the annual international environment art festival: www.9dragonheads.com, held in a natural reserve about 2 hours south of Seoul. The 1997 event was the largest, involving 70 artists from over twenty countries.
Inter-course, Performance by Park Byoung-Uk.

Brucke (Bridge), 2000, Performance/installation for the hofgarten, Innsbruk, Austria,
by Park Byoung-Uk. Branches and plastic foil.
 My world is the natural world and in a sense this is the source of existence. Here art is like a bridge between this world and human society.
This bridge symbolizes communication between humanity and Nature.
Brucke (Bridge), 2000, Performance/installation for the hofgarten, Innsbruk, Austria,
by Park Byoung-Uk.
 Choc Chokey / Kunst Heuriger, 2001 Kunsthalle Krems (Austria) Prison project
by Park Byoung-Uk.
While an artist residence at the Krems Kunsthalle in August and September, 2001, I chose to make an installation and Performance at the nearby prison. Krems has a very long history of human occupation (for example the Venus of Willendorf was found here). During the Roman Age wine was cultivated here. The baroque prison building was an old monastary and the locals are very angry that hte government now uses this as a prison. In response to this, government has invested energy in cultural events in the museum, the concert hall, festivals and the artist residency. I decided on the themes ?Choc-Chokey?and ?Kunst Heuriger?in response to this environment. I made fake chocolates out of wine snails set in paraffin trays. Wine snails are a speciality here. Chokey is an old word for prison.
In the summer heat as the paraffin melted, the snails tried to escape.

Detail of one of the objects viewed through the glass above: Choc Chokey / Kunst Heuriger, 2001 Kunsthalle Krems (Austria) Prison project
by Park Byoung-Uk.
Detail: Choc Chokey / Kunst Heuriger, 2001 Kunsthalle Krems (Austria) Prison project
by Park Byoung-Uk.
So the installation consisted largely of "information-display" boxes in prison and along the street. Thousands of tourists to this village stopped to examine these.

I performed each day with a broom made out of the roots of the gruner valtliner vine. This wine was first cultivated about a thousand years ago. I chose this in response to the current issues on cross-breeding in this area.

So I was cleaning up the streets of the Kunsthalle Krems and the prison with roots from before the days of cross-breeding for financial gain.

After each 'sweep up' I put the broom into the display cabinet with the accompanying documentation.

 

 

Terminus Public Project -New Zealand

                                  Written by Park, Byoung-Uk ( Nine Dragon Heads )

     My duties include the public art project linked with the public.
I will attempt to create the space more vitally by means of considering the objective, place, spectators' trends and characteristics in order to lead the actual public participation while escaping from the widespread and ill-advised object of spectators and forms of the existing public art.
Furthermore, the contemporary art is performed actively together with the public while narrowing down its emotional distance and it tends to be a participation-oriented exhibition not of exhibition but of the two-way communication in order to raise the understanding of both parties (artist and the public).

By means of using various media and free expression methods prevalent in modern art, the closed private space has an opportunity to come into contact with an experimental and open public space; in the meantime, the exhibition will be a chance for people to recognize creative thought, purification of emotion and the role and necessity of art for the public.

There are diverse and complicated interests among the members in a city because an individual interest is more emphasized than the interest of the community in the city. At the same time, every change is reflected in a very sensitive manner in the city.
Especially, there were unbearable changes in the cities where rapid industrialization was done in a short period of time. One of the characteristics that the city has is that people feel that the foundation of their lives is being constantly robbed and there are no humanity and people are alienated from each other.

What can art be in such an urban environment? No wonder that it is an important assignment for modern art to create the new role of art that can cope with a new urban environment while overcoming its public image and role. However, as the urban environment gets complex, the tradition concept of art based on exhibition is likely to lose its public features.

This is the reason that many people pay attention to public art in the urban environment. It is obvious that public art is an unfamiliar phrase on the assumption that art has been understood based on the exhibition. Public art is as wide and dynamic as the complexity of urban space and its mobility in its potential.

My 'Public Art Project' prepared in Terminus Project will suggest that one should solve the urban problems with an artistic way based on the aforementioned wide potential of public art. If one is willing to share the values and ideal of the given community through art, one can have an access to approach the problems that the special urban environment has in a community-oriented and democratically through public art because the procedures and compromise that can adjust different interests and thoughts among people in a democratic manner are emphasized in public art. The project, in which the cultural interruption will be performed in the city called Dunedin, is characterized by its true meaning of public image that aims to give respect to the daily lives of the citizens and to connect them with artistic ideal. That is also what people want from art.

 

 

 
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Left: Come ashore
Image source: Terminus, Haulashore. Photographed left: Iain Cheesman, right: Liz Bryce

Below: untitled
Image source:Terminus, Customhouse Quay. Photograph courtesy of the artist , and bottom: Iain Cheesman

Come ashore ( Perdormance at Haulashore Island- Nelson )

 

 
   
Come ashore ( Perdormance with People at Dunedin ) 
  

Dawn Light Symposium

Dawn Light: A contemporary art symposium, was held in the city of Gosford and nearby regions of the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia, from the 13th to the 25th of September, 2005.
The event focused on cultural values regarding ¡®nature¡¯ in different cultures and the way in which societal change and historical depth play out in the formulation of options for the future.
A central consideration was the idea of nature as a changing cultural construct in an increasingly global contemporary art environment.
Beginning from the position that nature defaults to culture, one of the objectives of Dawn Light was to examine the philosophical underpinnings that inform poetic expressions of contemporary cultural form in different societies.
As part of Dawn Light, a conference was held at the Ourimbah Campus of the University of Newcastle on the 24th of September.
Artists constructed site-specific work and made Performances in the grounds of the Gosford City Regional Gallery. The indoor exhibition space presented other works by the artists.

The exhibition remained until the 14th of October.
In recognition of the exchange relationship developed between the Nine Dragon Heads Symposium and directors Neil Berecry-Brown and Juliet Fowler-Smith, (Both brown¡¯s Cows artists), Korea was the featured country in the symposium. Other artists were from Japan, Australia and New Zealand; all countries that greet the new day together.

 

Encumbered Bush Walk ( Indoor  Exhibition / Gosford Regional Gallery, NSW )

Knowledge ( Outdoor Exhibition / Mangrove Forest )

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Encumbered Bush Walk ( Outoor Performance )